A Change In Course - We Head Into The Home Stretch

Today was a change in the course we were taking.  As we had limited man-power, I took a closer look at the trenching and made an executive decision.  The 8'-10' remaining to be trenched was back-stopped by the trenching in the bathroom basement.  So I decided it was now time to install the drain tile and start backfilling the open trenches with crushed stone.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Sump Pit Liner - Gift Shop Basement
A few weeks ago, I put out a call for two 45-gallon oil drums for the Gift Shop Basement (aka the Ladies' Waiting Room Basement).  The opening into this basement measured only 18" wide and 30" high.  Given that the diameter of a 45-gallon barrel is 24", we would have had a problem pushing a barrel through this opening.  Recall that a 45-gallon barrel makes a perfect liner for a sump pit.  So if we were to install a sump pit in the Gift Shop Basement, we would have to think of some way to get a 45-gallon barrel through that small opening.  What to do!!??

Aha!!  Split a 45-gallon barrel in half!!  How do I get the two halves together after I've shoved each piece into the Gift Shop Basement!!??  Very easy!  Cut two strips off of a second barrel, drill a whole bunch of holes, and bolt each half together using the two strips from the second barrel.

George W took on the challenge of finding two barrels.  With a little bit of arm-twisting some of the businesses in downtown Sensational Smiths Falls, he quickly located two barrels.  I trucked them into Ottawa to our secret machine shop and got Ross R to cut the barrels to spec.  Here's Ross at our secret machine shop using a plasma cutter to cut one barrel into two halves.  At first the air was very clear which is usually the case when using a plasma cutter.

What's a plasma cutter, you ask?  It's simply an arc welder in reverse, only without a welding rod attached.  The electric arc between the business end of the cutter and the barrel turns solid steel into a molten mass in the blink of an eye.  A stream of compressed air blows the molten metal out of the way, much the same way an oxy-acetylene torch does the job, only with much less heat.  A plasma cutter is one of my favourite tools!!

However, as he moved the torch down the length of the barrel, the paint heated up and started to smoke.  There had to be at least 10 coats of paint on exterior of that barrel - but none on the inside.

The air soon filled with smoke so we had to take a break for a few minutes while the air cleared.

I then used my handy-dandy angle grinder to clean up the rough edges, lined up and drilled matching holes in the two halves and two strips, installed some bolts, nuts, washers, and lockwashers, and tightened them all up.  Voila!  A barrel that can be dismantled, pushed through the opening, and reassembled inside the Gift Shop basement.Neat, eh!?

There was, however, a fair bit of exposed steel that would quickly rust through, which had to be painted.  Brad arrived on the scene this morning suffering from sore teeth as he had had a couple of molars pulled.  So we put him to work sloshing paint over the exposed steel.  (You can see the two strips of steel on the far side of Brad's leg.)

Stringing "Big-O" Drain Tile In The Baggage Room Basement
Meanwhile, Cliff, Bill S. and I were down in the basment stringing out the "Big-O" drain tile and threading it from the Waiting Room basement and into the trenches of the Baggage Room basement.  At times, wrangling those coils of "Big-O" seemed as if we were trying to hold onto a big Anaconda snake from the Amazon jungle.  However, we soon had the drain tile under control and into the bottom of the trenches.

Filling The Trenches With Crushed Stone
Our next step was to trek on down to the North end with a lorry, 12 buckets, and 4 shovels to get some crushed stone to backfill the trenches.   At this point, George M decided to join us and gave us a hand filling the buckets with crushed stone.  Not to sound like a record here, but if you ever install drain tile, the type of crushed stone you get is very, very important.  This is 1" clear septic bed crushed stone.  It's been washed twice at the quarry so it doesn't have any of those fine pieces of grit which is known as "stone dust". 

The lorry that we use will only accommodate 12 buckets - 6 on each side.  However, when you fill up a bucket, you have one heck of a lot of weight.  And given that we're no longer full of the same p@#s-and-vinegar that we had 22 years ago, throwing those pails of crushed stone around is no easy job!

Once the pails are filled, we put them on the lorry, wheel the lorry back to the station, and unload the pails onto the edge of the station platform.  One-by-one, we then struggle with a pail to the door going down into the basement.  Walking a pail down a flight of stairs is no easy job.  And once we've got the pail down into the furnace-room basement, the job is only half done!  We next lug the pail through the opening into the Waiting Room basement, across that basement, and into the Baggage Room basement.

Here's Bill S. sticking his head into the Baggage Room basement with a pail of crushed stone.

And here's me emptying the pail into the trench. 

We managed to make two trips - 24 pails of crushed stone - before lunch.  This is the trench work that we managed to fill.  It doesn't look like a lot but those trenches are 18"-24" deep.

It's a case of that old story -
How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.
How do you fill a trench with crushed stone?  One pail at a time. 

We all had personal business to attend to after lunch so we called it a day.  We'll be back at it again next week.